Samuel Beckett
[Writer, b. 1906, Foxrock, Dublin, Ireland, d. 1989, Paris.]
I still smile it’s not worth the trouble any morefor a long time now it’s not been worth the trouble
the tongue spring goes into the mud I stay like
this not thirsty any more the tongue goes back into
the mouth it closes it has to make a straight line
now it’s done I’ve made the image.
Beaumont Newhall
[Photographer, writer, and historian, b. 1908, Lynn, Massachusetts, d. 1993, Santa Fe, New Mexico.]
Documentary is, therefore, an approach, which makes use of the artistic faculties to give “vivification to fact”—to use Walt Whitman’s definition of the place of poetry in the modern world. Frederick Douglass
[Writer, orator, activist, b. 1818, Talbot County, Maryland, d. 1895, Washington, D.C..]
Poets, prophets and reformers are all picture makers—and this ability is the secret of their power and of their achievements. Luc Delahaye
[Photographer, b. 1962, Tours, France, lives in Paris.]
I was twenty when I discovered war and photography. I can’t say that I wanted to bear witness and change the world. I had no good moral reasons: I just loved adventure, I loved the poetry of war, the poetry of chaos, and I found that there was a kind of grace in weaving between the bullets. Thomas Roma
[Photographer, b. 1950, Brooklyn, New York, lives in Brooklyn.]
Straight photography, following the medium, is intoxicating—trying to wrestle it into the form of a poem. Charles Nègre
[Photographer, b. 1820, Grasse, France, d. 1880, Cannes, France.]
Photography does not form a separate, barren field of art. It is only a means of execution, uniform, rapid and sure, which serves the artist by reproducing with mathematical precision the form and effect of objects and even that poetry which at once arises from any harmonious combination. Annette Messager
[Artist, b. 1943, Berck-sur-Mer, France, lives in Paris.]
I stick eyes back onI unstick ears
I cut off fingers
I tear off a breast
this is my law of exchanges
I carve up
I pull to pieces...
I give birth only to chimera
Philip Larkin
[Poet and writer, b. 1922, Coventry, England, d. 1985, London.]
At last you yielded up the album, whichOnce open, sent me distracted. All your ages
Matt and glossy on the thick black pages!
Too much confectionery, too rich:
I choke on such nutritious images.